


In The Bleak Midwinter

by livia_1291



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Flashbacks, Fluff, Forest Spirits, I’m not satisfied with this anyway, M/M, Magic, Northern Lights, Sequel, This was supposed to be shorter, also something something lynx paws something, don't ask me why lalli doesn't sink into the snow, emil västerström - Freeform, emillalli, he’s a forest spirit, i am writing so much right now because i'm supposed to be studying, it's just fluff, lalli hotakainen - Freeform, learning to love, made of impossibilities and mysteries and magic, myths, no beta we die like men, oh well, poor emil just wants a proper bed, stand still stay silent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23812006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livia_1291/pseuds/livia_1291
Summary: A fluffy little sequel to Above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between regarding names, mysteries, and learning to love.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	In The Bleak Midwinter

“How’d you get your name?” Emil asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the peeling white trunk of a birch tree as he watched his partner work.

Lalli didn’t look up from where he was crouched, studying a ring of glowing blue mushrooms. He took his time, tracing a deft finger along the frilled edges of one and watching with intrigue as it slid back into the earth with a soft _pop._

Emil knew better than to think that he was ignoring him. Lalli was the kind of person who needed time to consider his responses, and had no qualms taking it. It had taken a bit to learn this - at first, Emil had been quite put-out about it, though he had eventually just added it to his running list of Lalli’s little quirks, like his vehement dislike of blueberries in any form, and his preference for sleeping _under_ things instead of _on_ them.

Lalli straightened and adjusted his lynx-fur cloak around his shoulders. “My grandmother gave it to me. It’s from a story her parents used to tell her.”

“I’m familiar with that story,” Emil dropped his arms from his chest, going to stand before Lalli to gauge the look in his pretty almond eyes. “I mean the other part. _Silver-Souled_. What does it mean?”

This time, Lalli’s brows furrowed, and he looked away from Emil, studying the soil beneath his feet. For a terrifying moment, Emil wondered if he had asked a forbidden question.

Instead of snapping at him or ignoring the question entirely, he folded his hand into Emil’s, and pulled him into the shade of a aspen tree still dripping with the morning’s quicksilver dew. Tuuri had been hard at work, Emil noted, brushing a few cool drops from his hair as he settled down with his back against the bark.

Lalli fitted his willowy body against his side, and Emil welcomed him under his arm, tipping his head back against the rough surface of the tree behind him. A minute passed where both of them were quiet, enjoying the sweetness of the birdsong and the comforting warmth of companionship. 

For once, Lalli was the one to break the silence. “I don’t know,” he murmured, shifting so that his legs were slung across Emil’s thighs. He reached up to play with the familiar silver key that hung around Emil’s neck on a leather cord, brows furrowed in something that could have been conflict, or just thought — it was hard to tell with him.

Emil blinked, tilting his head to look at the man curled half in his lap. “You don’t...know what it means? But it’s your name, how could you not..?”

Lalli only shrugged as Emil trailed off into thought, tucking his head against his partner’s broad shoulder and closing his eyes to nap entirely unbothered by the brightness of the morning sun.

Perhaps it was suiting that Lalli didn’t know what his name meant, Emil thought, absently petting his hair. He was a mystery, made of magic and moonlight and sharp claws, and he had long accepted that there were parts of Lalli that he would never - _could_ never - fully understand. 

That wasn’t to say that he didn’t try. In the first few months of their companionship, he had spent the days trying to puzzle Lalli out. He had learned very quickly that Lalli was not particularly fond of human comforts - their first nights together were spent with Lalli curled catlike in a snarl of cyprus roots, watching Emil as he tried to make some semblance of a bed out of pine boughs. Three days passed like this before Emil told the spirit, exhausted and grumpy, that an actual bed was _completely_ non-negotiable.

* * *

_At his request, Lalli gave him a long, blank look, and then bounded off into the trees in the shape of a lynx, leaving Emil to stare helplessly after him. After a few hours of mindless pacing and wondering if he had just been abandoned, he managed to fall asleep with his cheek squashed on a mossy patch by an elm tree. He was roused as the sun was setting by a sharp pain in his left eye. Lalli was crouched beside him, back in human form, with a slender index finger still extended._

_“Ow,” Emil murmured, but before he could gather the words to ask what was so urgent as to require a poke to the eye, Lalli had him on his feet, and was dragging him (not too gently) by the wrist through the thick green undergrowth._

_“What the hell, Lalli?” He whined, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the heel of his free hand as he tried not to trip over roots and fallen branches. Lalli moved through the forest with fluid ease, but Emil still stumbled - it wasn’t his fault that the trees didn’t part for him._

_Lalli stopped abruptly on the margins of a grassy clearing, causing Emil to nearly tumble into the back of him. There, with warm, inviting light spilling from the windows, was a tiny cabin that Emil was absolutely positive had not been there in the morning._

_“For you,” Lalli had murmured, and Emil noticed the coal-dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes. Of course. Lalli had done this by magic. A wave of guilt threatened to choke him - just how much energy had he spent?_

_“Thank you,” he whispered, running a hand over the smooth wood of the door. His heart was glowing as bright and warm as the strange gold and green fire in the stone fireplace, and this time, he took Lalli by the hand and lead him inside._

* * *

He had also learned that Lalli did not follow the rhythms of the sun the way Emil did. He ate when he was hungry, and slept when he was tired, regardless of the time of day. Sometimes, a day would go by where they would not see each other, but Emil would wake in the dead of night to the creak of the cabin door opening, and the whisper-soft sound of footsteps as Lalli slid under the frame of the bed to sleep.

* * *

_It was midwinter, and the earth slept soundly in her blanket of snow and ice. The night encroached on the noonday’s brightness, and the animals of the forest that had not hidden away to spend the season dreaming scrounged for any caches of nuts or seeds that they had hidden in the warm months._

_“Wake up,” Lalli told him, and Emil groaned, pulling the blanket up to cover his head._

_“It’s the middle of the night, Lalli,” came his muffled protest, but Lalli was undeterred, yanking the blanket back and staring at Emil with wide eyes that glowed faintly in the darkness of the cabin._

_“W_ _e’re going somewhere.”_

_Emil knew better than to argue with Lalli when he was insistent on something like this. Quietly mourning the loss of the warm quilt and pleasantly mundane dreams about cake, he got to his feet and pulled on his heavy cloak and boots._

_“Do I get to know where we’re going?” he asked as Lalli guided him through the dark forest with sure steps. The winter-bare shapes of the trees against the frigid stars had scared Emil as a child, but now the forest was home, and with Lalli by his side, he trusted that no harm would come to him._

_Lalli’s lack of reply was answer enough. More mysteries, thought Emil, straining to see through the trees. To his surprise, they emerged from the perimeter of the forest into a grand meadow, white-blanketed and still. The half-moon cast blue shadows over the thick snow, which Lalli crossed without even sinking._

_“What’s here?” Emil asked, dragging himself though powdery, calf-deep snow and drawing his cloak around himself a little tighter to block out the wind sweeping across the field._

_“Wait,” whispered Lalli, whose eyes were trained on the winter sky._

_There was nothing but their breathing, soft and misty, for several moments. Emil had just opened his mouth to ask another question when the heavens came to life._

_Shimmering, gossamer curtains of green and pink and purple dropped across the blackness of the night, dancing and flickering in a latticework of swirling patterns._

_“Fox fires,” explained Lalli, who extended a hand to the sky and murmured something in a lilting language that Emil had only heard in the form of spells and the songs Lalli would whisper as he plucked out a tune on his kantele._

_A piece of the aurora split away, plummeting towards earth in a shower of bright green and violet. Emil stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over his own feet in the deep snow, but Lalli was unfazed, lowering his hand and kneeling to greet their visitor._

_A fox, made of fire and starlight, alighted on the snow in front of Lalli, who extended his palm to it. The creature bumped its forehead against his open hand, and Lalli glanced back at Emil with a tiny smile curving the familiar shape of his mouth._

_“Come,” he whispered, and Emil tried to ignore the way his heart hammered in his throat as he waded through the snow to stand at the spirit’s shoulder. Lalli took his gloved hand in his own, carefully removing the glove and guiding him to hold it out to the curious fox, who wasted no time licking Emil’s fingertips with a pink tongue that looked to be made of nothing but magic and light._

_It was warm and ticklish, and even after the fox bounded back across the snow and into the sky, it stayed with Emil, like a memory of the summer sun, or the heat on his skin after a good sauna._

_“So that’s what you wanted me to see,” breathed Emil, still captivated by the lights twisting and untangling above their heads._

_“Mm.”_

_Silence was never uncomfortable with Lalli. Not anymore, at least. It was companionable and soft, and the more time they spent together, the more Emil appreciated the art of keeping one’s mouth shut._

_When he tore his eyes away from the aurora to look at Lalli, he immediately realized that he had been gazing at the wrong thing. The lights were pretty, but Lalli was beautiful. Otherworldly and a little weird, but beautiful just the same. The moonlight across his high, sharp cheekbones cast dark shadows into the hollows just beneath them, and his whole being flickered with the luminous, ice-blue energy that Emil remembered from their first meeting, a reminder of the power that he knew simmered just beneath the surface. His eyes, intense and striking, shone with all the colors of the fox fires and more, and not for the first time, Emil wondered over the fluttering feeling behind his ribcage._

_“What?” asked Lalli, who sensed that Emil was staring, and had turned to look at him with an arched brow._

_“Nothing,” managed Emil, who could not find enough shame to tear his gaze away. Lalli was looking at him, and only him, and suddenly, it was very hard to breathe. “I just...I...”_

_It was cold in the meadow, but when Lalli leaned in and kissed him quiet, Emil felt as though he was standing in a ring of fire, bright and hot and magnificent, and he slid his hand up, along the sharp edge of his jawline and into fine, pale hair. Lalli tilted his head and made a soft, pleased little noise in his throat, and Emil was weightless, gathering the spirit into the span of his unoccupied arm. He savored the feeling of Lalli’s quick, clever hands curled so tightly into the fabric at his back, the way his slender body locked so perfectly against Emil’s chest, as though they were two halves of the same cleaved stone, and the way Lalli would barely let him pull away before drawing him back for more._

_Even after they were both out of breath and a little bit dazed, they stayed like that, wrapped up in each other beneath the living sky._

_“Lalli?” he whispered, and Lalli crinkled his nose at the tickling warmth of Emil’s breath across his cheeks._

_“What?”_

_“This is nice, but if we stay out here any longer, I’m going to lose my toes.”_

_Lalli smacked him in the arm with the glove he had stolen, and hand in hand, they returned to the waiting warmth of a fireplace, and a bed big enough for two._

* * *

“You know, I think the mystery of it suits you,” Emil murmured, pressing a soft kiss to Lalli’s temple.

Lalli stirred, one eye fluttering open, and then closed almost immediately after. He spoke softly, into the warm junction of Emil’s neck and shoulder.

“Mystery of what…? Go to sleep.”

Emil only laughed, and closed his own eyes to join Lalli in the world of dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again friends!
> 
> Phew, this has been in the works for a while, and it gave me so much trouble. I'm still not wholly satisfied with it, but here it is anyway. I've got my final exam tomorrow, and then I'm free until late August (assuming I am allowed to return to Canada.) I'm hoping to get some more writing done for Lovely, Dark, and Deep during that time, but for now, take this little sequel. (I meant for it to be around 1,300 words, but I got carried away/had to write myself out of a jam.)
> 
> I also got a tumblr! Not quite sure what to do there, but I’m under the same name. Drop me a line if you want to chat!
> 
> If anyone wants to know, the story that Lalli mentions is Henrikin Surma from the Kanteletar, and it involves an axe murder, a bishop, and a frozen lake. 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> xx.
> 
> Liv


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